Paula Deen on Wait Wait

Paula Deen was on Wait, Wait this afternoon on NPR.  It was hysterical.

I wonder how much they had to offer her to go on Hardball...

I haven't taken Government since my senior year of high school.  Granted, I may have been absent the day we learned about the executive branch, but I'm fairly sure the role of the Veep is not "to be in charge of the United States Senate."

Chris Matthews reduces Palin's spokesperson Nancy Photenhauer to a stammering mess in this clip:

On a related note, let's get the media to root out all the anti-Americans in Congress!

Having finally finished with the Puritans, my AmLit class is moving on to the Enlightenment.  I am making them read the introduction to The Assault on Reason by Al Gore and crossing my fingers that maybe one or two of them will get it.  And no, it's not because I'm voting for Obama and want to use my position of power to feed my liberal agenda to the impressionable minds of today's youth, but because that section has everything to do with what the Founders had in mind when framing the Constitution: that it was necessary for a conscientious, informed public to use reasoned, rational thinking to enact the best policy decisions.  The review from the NYT explains better than I could, and with quotes even:

Mr. Gore’s central argument is that “reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions” and that the country’s public discourse has become “less focused and clear, less reasoned.” This “assault on reason,” he suggests, is personified by the way the Bush White House operates. Echoing many reporters and former administration insiders, Mr. Gore says that the administration tends to ignore expert advice (be it on troop levels, global warming or the deficit), to circumvent the usual policy-making machinery of analysis and debate, and frequently to suppress or disdain the best evidence available on a given subject so it can promote predetermined, ideologically driven policies.

That's my rehash of recent politics.  Go nuts, kids.

Rent or Pirate This!!

Ricky Gervais is my new favorite actor. Rent or otherwise procure a great BBC sitcom called Extras--just trust my judgement on this one--and watch the first four or five in a row. Go on, I know it's not like you're doing a whole lot else right now, and maybe you got some Blockbuster gift cards or something and can go rent it.

Christmas Shopping Help--Fast!

NPR saves the day, once again. If you, like me, are having trouble finding smart gifts for smart people on your list, Head Butler has ideas. They will even email them to you if you are really desperate or shop all year long.

Tyson and I happened to stumble upon this review of Amadou and Miram's album, Dimanche a Bamako. For some strange reason, Tyson heard of this band about a year ago and had been trying to remember who the heck they were and where he could find them, and POOF! here they are on NPR as we pulled into the grocery store parking lot. Weird, huh? I hope you like the video; as loyal readers know, I no longer have a working sound card on my laptop so I just went by looks.

So anyway, I realize it has been a long time since I checked in. Here is a partial list of things I have been doing and may, at some point, get around to telling everyone all about:

1. Going to the National Reading Conference in LA and feeling incredibly dumb around all the researchers, all talking about their "pedagogy" and "methodologies" and "multimodalities" and all that.

Related topics:

a. Everything in LA is expensive.

b. I got to drive a Prius.

c. I had five birds on me at the aquarium but then one of them bit me.

2. Going to Texas for Thanksgiving and eating Tex-Mex food and seeing the fam (except Deidre and my gay cousin Matt)

3. Desperately cleaning my house (including scrubbing the detailing in the cabinet doors with a toothbrush!) because other family is coming on Friday.

4. Teaching one of my classes about the Civil Rights Movemement, while trying to convice them that the way to change the world is not by going to jail--a fine line to tread, I might add.

5. Playing with Power Point and poetry

6. Beginning to realize that Christmas is coming up and I'd better get off my ass and, you know, think about other people for a change

7. Writing final exams. Here are some sample questions:

What kind of soda do advertisers drink? The correct answer is E.

a. Dr. Pepper

b. This is not the correct answer.

c. Pepsi

d. Sprite

e. Choose E. It is the correct answer.

What is the name of the teacher whose class you are taking a final exam for right now?

a. Mrs. Allen

b. Mr. Strotbeck

c. Ms. Downey

d. Mr. Guinn

(Actually, Mr. Guinn's first name is, inexplicably, Shelby, so I can see where they might be confused.)

Those are by no means the only questions. There are, of course, recycled questions on warranties and story elements, but hey, these are 7th graders taking a 110-question test. They need a little break once in a while.

8. Playing Sims 2 while I wait for Tyson to get a new external CD-ROM drive so I can play the long-awaited Neverwinter Nights 2.

9. Enjoying the 65-degree weather the last few days (sounds nice, huh Deidre?)

10. Fretting about my blog. Really.

Please check back in again early next week and I will have written about some of these topics, or about other new stuff, or about other things I heard on NPR.

A Quick Break from the Poster Contest

So I was listening to NPR's Morning Edition on the way to work this morning, and I was completely appalled at most of the listener comments. I seriously can't believe NPR listeners actually have room in their heads for the typically insightful and thoughtful news reporting featured on Morning Edition, and also for this right-wing, xenophobic, misguided, Limbaughesque drivel. Click here, then click "listen" to check it out. Then at least I know I've ruined someone else's day, too.

There was also a great little segment on former Texas Governor Ann Richards that is worth listening to. I'd been harboring the secret desire to write her in for the Democratic primaries in 2008. Maybe I could have organized my readership and actually gotten her in.

We'll never know.